A Shifting on the Way to Never
by shriekback2004
Summary: Not entirely pleased with the theme of the new expansion, so decided to write my own based in the Emerald Dream/Nightmare. Focus will be on lore-neglected races like the Worgen and Forsaken, as well as factions, locations and characters that were more or less dropped by Blizzard (Scarlet Crusade, Alterac, Ravenholdt, etc.).
1. Chapter 1

**Night Anglers**

A scream and something sparked across the green line of the wood, a gust rippling as angles shaken in moonlight on a lake; the Dragonmaw glared up at it from exhausted eyes, saw the night panic around the movement and fell back faint.

She retreated then, who was just a hair of stars on the night's head...

When the orc woke a halo of daylight ringed his vision. The air in the clearing smelled of phosphorus and charred game, and his ears rang with the pulsing light. It was morning, and his grimy armor was soaked in blood. He stood, collected the bow by his side, and looked for the bear flank he was sent to gather. Miles off the Dragonmaw camp spat to life, wordless anger on the wind. His head throbbing he cursed and started for the noise, dragging the carcass one foot before the other until the swamp pines parted into a clearing before him.

"Brugo, where have you been all night and day?" Gar'shan the hunt leader stood beside a crude smokehouse trimming the carcass of a deer, its ribs open and wild. The other orcs, a force of nearly thirty, gathered behind Gar'shan in a nervous half-circle. Her grimace changed when she saw the bear carcass, and Brugo saw fear in the red orc's eyes.

"What is that?" Gar'shan snarled, pointing behind Brugo to his burden. What was left of the bear seethed with a purple flame, visible in the daylight of the camp clearing, and behind it a fainter trail of fire led back through the woods. Head teetering like a stone on a hill, the exhausted orc made no answer.

"Twilight witchcraft, and you've tracked it here, fool! Gather your things, all of you, and take the meat, we return to Gor'zan at the camp below the Redoubt..."

"Wait, Gar'shan," Brugo started, but he felt whatever strength had carried him through the Wetlands collapse beneath him, and crumpled to the ground.

In his exhaustion he dreamed of the encounter in the wood. A strand of willows, outline of a human female. He drifted into darkness and stepped through that space without a sound, daggers of drake fang materializing, inches close, smell close. Then a flame like the opposite of the sun, a figure visible in a richer dark, like a shaman trance-lost before a bonfire, the witch rising on a column of screaming nothing. He attacked, viper-quick, but here his speed was overmatched. The poison on his blades hissed in the purple flames and cut empty air. Spinning through the night the witch moved back and away through the trees for better footing. He sensed the attack coming, pulled himself into shadow and fled back to his kill. His bow was raised before the purple fire engulfed the trees around him. Brugo was a killer-killer of men, killer of dwarves and of dragons-but before him was more than a killer. In his mind the arrow left his grip, but in the space between instinct and the world she'd crossed the wood and latched burning arms around his neck. Then a sound in the distance like voices screaming into other voices. The witch fled, and the orc collapsed in flame in the burning wood.

When Brugo woke the camp shaman stood over him, whispering into his old hands. It was night, and smoke filled the small hide tent, but Brugo could see from his mat that most of the camp had been broken. The orcs had ventured into the Wetlands in search of game once Orgrimmar had fallen, abandoning Dragonmaw Port and moving deeper through the Highlands. Zaella was gone from Grim Batol, none knew where, and troll longboats gathered beyond the tides. The Wildhammer dwarves, always a threat, made emboldened raids on whatever orcish settlements remained, most perched on the brittle stone of ruined Twilight encampments. The Dragonmaw, of the Great Clans pure in war, hand of the Hungering Death beneath Grim Batol, wandered Azeroth again in defeat.

"Throm'ka, Dragonmaw." The old shaman waved a smoldering herb under Brugo's nose, and the world began to refocus. "We must talk, my friend, tell me what happened to you in those woods."

"Bregga, go, you must tell Gar'shan it was not the Twilight's Hammer. A witch or some filth, but nothing I've seen before. I stumbled upon her on the hunt. She could have finished me easily, but fled a noise north of the marsh."

"The screaming? We heard it here. Gar'shan was much concerned, but the spirits are silent. They will not tell me what it was. Here then, drink this."

Brugo rose from his reed mat, and the shaman handed him a brew of swiftthistle and Gromsblood. The orc took the mixture in a single pull, and his senses hardened again. The anger returned. To be defeated by a woman, a _human_ woman. He looked down at one hand: purple flame danced the length of his forearm, but there was no pain.

"What is this Bregga?"

"An enchantment of some sort. It doesn't consume, only burns. From a distance it's barely visible. A gift from your witch I assume." Bregga lifted a bundle from a small table beside the fire, "Gar'shan and the others were not pleased at the sight of it. She has gone with most of the hunt to the Redoubt. The rest she left here with you." Bregga dipped his head, offering Brugo two daggers wrapped in hide, "Maggar the Red, I suspect, means to kill you. It would be best if you vanished somehow, if you're up to it."

Brugo took the blades. "I will go to the Redoubt, Gor'zan must hear of what I've seen."

Bregga grabbed his arm as he moved to leave, "There are nine of them, Brugo of Shadowmoon, plus Maggar. Only kill who you must. I, at least, will need them."

"Lok'tar, friend."

The shaman stood a moment, noticed his hand burning with a violet flame, and waved it slowly through the smoke of the tent fire. The flames spun in the mist and were gone.

Brugo stepped into the night. The camp was a small clearing in the surrounding marsh, circled by a low forest of scrub and pine, and the moon cut shadows through the few tents that remained. A large bonfire was set far to the right of where he stood, and nine Dragonmaw sat around it, eating roasted boar and barking lies to each other. The orc moved deliberately, each step fading further into darkness, making for the treeline, away from the camp and the burning witch. If he made good time he could arrive at the Redoubt within hours of Gar'shan...

From deep in the night there was a sound then, like throats of men twisted one into the other, screams woven into screams. Brugo froze. The nine Dragonmaw around the fire were up, weapons in hand, and Maggar was among them now. Bregga emerged from his tent, eyes that weren't his own already far off in the distance watching for a source. Again the strange chorus darkened the night, this one voice of many agonies.

In a panic one of the Dragonmaw launched a flare off into the trees above Brugo, and Maggar bellowed at the sight of him. "Cursed rogue, where do you slink off to on this night? Come by the fire, there is warrior work in those woods!"

In the moment Maggar took to laugh Brugo was behind him. A blur of pain, and the huge red orc was motionless. Brugo spun off at the other warriors then, blades singing. One charged, polearm too far above his right shoulder; Brugo hesitated a moment until the warrior committed to the strike, faded to his left, and with an upsweeping blow severed the orc's right hand at the wrist. In a snarling cloud Brugo stepped through the emptiness between the remaining warriors. "Defeat, don't kill," his brain barked at his blood. Two several paces from the fight were crippled with shuriken; another he struck in some hidden electrical valley in his spine, and the giant warrior fell gasping dust.

The chorused screaming again, but now closer in the trees and joined by something else. Brugo didn't hear the sound at first, but felt the earth beneath his feet swell, rising as though shoved aside, then returning as waves moving through rock. The fight froze like a chessboard, the pieces who could still fight motionless with their ears to the night.

"Bruuuugo!" Maggar hissed through his frozen throat.

The wavelike pressure approached, wrapping itself in sound. The Dragonmaw stood in amazement, turning their eyes to the sound of the behemoth, mountain-large, moving through brush and trees. A darkness tore at the night sky: the rough shape of a man, but ogre-sized, or greater than ogre-sized, and moving like a thing with a thousand joints, like a kraken made of cracking bone. Its shadow rose horrible swallowing the stars, a quivering mass just out of the light of the bonfires.

The behemoth stopped then, and a figure appeared at the edge of the clearing. In shape it was man or night elf, but too lean, moving unwhole like smoke billows from a fire. Long ago Brugo had seen the form of a sentinel scorched in her last moments, and touched this statue of ash with his blade. What form was left to her swirled as a sooty cloud on the breeze and was nothing. This thing moved like the destroyed elf: a cloud of ash continually reforming. It stopped at the dancing edge of the firelight, and from the trees its army of horrors gathered. Shapes too narrow or elongated, shoulders too widely set. Dried things, like desert corpses, or others like bodies left too long in still water; yellowed husks with retreating eyes, or purple and drenched in their own stink. Not human, not elf, not tauren, not orc.

The Figure stretched taut, a carrion bird rising before them.

"The witch," its dead voice crackled, and Brugo thought of the wastes of Kalimdor, late at night, when wind and dried sticks would speak any word from your fear.

"There is no witch here, undead," Maggar growled, still paralyzed where he stood. "Take your menagerie and march to your Whore of Tirisfal."

The Figure was before Maggar then, its face like a starved animal, "We are not undead."

"And what are you, wretch? We do not fear death."

"I do not offer death."

The Figure turned from Maggar, and made a gesture with its hand. From the shadows tendrils of darkness edged in flame rose, lashed about the legs of the Dragonmaw and held them fast. The thing of smoke bent to the ground then, retching a pile of ash at its feet. The ashes glowed unnaturally, then burst into flame, and from the heart of it the Figure retrieved a heated brand.

Bregga began to chant the old words, native songs of Draenor of fire and earth and storm, and the Figure turned to him. "Crippled song. We remember our own song, spiritwalker." In the time it takes to snuff a candle it was before him, "This is the only word."

The Figure pressed the brand to Bregga's throat, and the ash-grey skin twisted around the iron, leaving a rune that glowed white-hot then vanished. Wordlessly the thing passed from prisoner to prisoner, branding in each the strange symbol with the heated rod. When it reached Brugo it saw the purple flames dancing beneath his armor.

"You know," its dried voice cracked, "Tell me what you know." When Brugo failed to answer, it burned the rune into his cheek. "Then sing with us, orc, and we will find her together."

Then Brugo was beyond it, bursting free across the dust. The Figure turned on him but the orc moved arrow-quick, slicing through the carnival of dead things and away from their ashen king. The Figure screeched and the horde of dead encircled the camp, a coliseum with walls of rotting flesh, the bonfire at the center, and Brugo danced within, hacking through hollowed limbs. Maggar leapt free of the shadows, too, struck the earth like a fallen tree and tore his ax through the dead things. Like a bird of ash the Figure rose into the stars, fading, one with the night, then fell screaming onto Maggar. The orc raised his ax to the thing, but was overwhelmed, his body shattered. Blades whistled through the Figure, Brugo appearing suddenly to its right. It spun on some internal axis and lashed at him with black wings, but again the orc was too quick. Both blades buried in its flank, the cruel thing screeched and retreated to the stars.

A many-voiced scream, and the trees near the edge of the forest groaned and cracked. The behemoth was moving toward the clearing, and the Figure, a cloud of ash choking the stars, cackled from above. Brugo lashed out at the dead things, thought to cut a path through to the opposite treeline, but they were too numerous. The voice from above mocked his fight, "Ours now, orc, shall we march to Tirisfal?"

Something happened to the sky, a wailing that bent the stars and sent the dead things hissing together in a pack. The Figure collapsed from the air; purple flames played in its ash like lightning in a cloudbank, and it screeched again, this time in pain, "Witch! Scarlet witch!" A wave of fire churned through the crowd of dead then. Through an alley of twitching limbs Brugo saw the dark flame and figure of the witch, an undead, not human, empty eyes burning. She snatched Brugo's arm and he was weightless in the air, twisting from tree to tree like a bird. The clearing pulled back from his vision at incredible speed, but there was a song now. He could hear their song on the wind.

The witch fell to the ground at the sound of it, Brugo crashing at her feet. Instantly she drove a thin dagger through the meat of his leg, pinning him to the dust as the singing grew louder, crazed, a single word dancing madly in the night. Brugo felt a pressure in the bones of his face, and far off the screaming began, ten voices screeching in undiscovered agony. The Dragonmaw lifted from the forest floor, the witch frantically pressing him to the ground and hissing curses, searching him for the mark.

Silence now. In the distance the Figure spoke, a dead voice now, beyond emotion. "Come back to us, orc," the unnatural calm echoed with ten screams, "COME BACK TO US, ORC!"

"Or we will begin our song without you."

"COME BACK TO US!" screeched the ten voices, the song rejoined, and below it the sound of the behemoth moving through the trees.

The dagger cut a groove in the forest floor, the horrible screams dragging the orc into the song. The witch clutch to his chest and went dead. In her mind she willed the world to end its turning, crushed its bends and dirt into crystal shapes, beginning things, forming a simple space from insanity. She fell then, saw the nothing that hungered beneath, and spat her orders in hate. Approximate plumblines dropped, like dowsing strings bowing the forest straight. She dreamed a room formed of her tension, a cell, and the orc straining in that cell against the pull of whatever emptiness screamed from the forest. Its line of force, a point in invented space. She had passed through it. "I know you," the witch thought, "I know where you hide."

A flash of steel severed the branded half-face of the orc, and the emptiness that called it screamed back alone through the trees. There was a sound like a great beast drowning, then of a second behemoth thundering toward them.

Brugo jumped to his feet in agony, the blood from his ruined face pooling at his feet. He meant to kill her, but his blades held. Without agreement they began to run.

"What is your name, orc?" she asked him, passing close through the willows.

"I am Brugo."

"Brugo Half-Face, run with me tonight. My name is Lilian Voss."


	2. Chapter 2

**Lilian Dies a Second Time**

Death took days to be real. She fell through it, but it recoiled from her. Roots she saw slip past in a torrent of earth, down into the darkness, and other things. Old dead. Bones of creatures never seen and nightmare caverns formed from their rot. No sound here. Stone ground stone but the voice of it dissipated in heated rock flowing miles deep, retching its hate at Blackrock.

Her thoughts were lost to it. In the cloud of electricity some phrase would surface and drown again like sailors bobbing in a wreck.

"Why father?"

A mother somewhere, wailing at the court in Stromgarde. There was the warmth. In the deep there is no heat, for no two things ever touch.

"I serve the Crusade, father. I am its hand."

Corpses danced over the wall and she hacked at them gone in fury and righteousness. Unseeing holes too numerous to count fixed on her in the darkness of Tirisfal. The sky wheeled in her eyes and fled from her. The taste of it.

"What is our cause, father?"

It whispered. Those that knew spoke of it shame-faced in their corners. They weasled in their madness, those that knew, wore it like a child's bib for their slobbering. Somewhere past her locked in stone was a voice, but wings drowned those words now. Taste of earth and rot in the darkness. So many unseeing holes open to the sky of Tirisfal.

"Where am I?"

A cute question, an artifact of childhood. Neither here nor there, child, and there are no children in Lordaeron now. The dead do not raise them for war. Wander the hills and hear memories of their footsteps in the thousands, and what is a child without her mother? Phantoms that cloud the ruins of the City as adventurers seek glory, rotting things that were their mothers and fathers in another City.

"What is my cause?"

Torn in half. To see things that way, like a bird stares into the surface of a lake, the sky it sees and the sky it flies. One side is very real. It surprised her, this gift from Gandling: she knows the deep is neither place nor substance. It penetrates death like the plague of old but does not animate its slaves. It breaks down, hates structure, words, names, cities, all the substance of a life. The silver hills of Lordaeron. Brill. Andorhal. Pyrewood. Darrowshire. Wretches whose names survived death. Shades in the trees mumbling "Mother." The Dark Lady.

The deep hates names.

"Come to me, Lilian, I do not offer death."

Unknowing that darkness lit the spark. She had risen against the Scourge, rose from death itself and abandoned her life to fight across the length of Lordaeron again. In their emptiness villains confuse blood for life, think you kill the cause by stopping the hearts that carry it. The cause is the heart. No more deals sworn to men with closed hands.

"Why father?"

No agency called her. What would unmake the child seeking its mother in eternity, or a new City rising from its own death? The true enemy, not the false cause of slaughter, killing life beyond your understanding. Whatever it calls itself, life must be preserved, so she rose from the void.

"WHY FATHER?!"

Life is the cause.


	3. Chapter 3

**To the Silver Hills**

Terathus loathed the skies of Northrend. The continent spread like a grave beneath the great green drake, hard and frozen and crawling with its dead. Cast an eye to any cardinal direction and it was met with the same annihilating wisdom. Bones of dragons far greater and older than he lay beneath its shimmering skies, their mouths crying out eternally for their flights. Shambling corpses of men or worse wandered the fields of battles long lost, while remnants of the fallen kingdoms of the spider foraged across Dragonblight. Throughout Icecrown, walls forged from the blood of an Old God cut the region into slabs of rot, a nightmarish reversal of the tidily bordered farms of Ellwyn, the land Terathus loved most. The only retreat from the ghoulish air was the Basin, and Terathus was rarely called to that green valley. Ysera had tasked him with hunting down those who would twist nature, necromancers and dark shaman of the native races. There were still many in Northrend who sought power in the magic of the dead. It was a worthy goal, the dragon thought, to harness such a limitless resource. As the skies say, death comes for all on Azeroth.

Over the horizon the familiar glow of Shandaral appeared, another memory of death singing beneath the northern sky, and then the dreamlike spires of Dalaran. Terathus rose on great wings high above Crystalsong Forest, savored the sunlight on his scales, weak as it was, and circled down to Krasus' Landing.

"Greetings, Terathus," Aludane Whitecloud said as the green dragon landed, reshaping piecemeal into his human form. "Archmage Alvareaux waits for you in the Citadel. Welcome back to Dalaran, my friend."

"Thank you, Aludane, it is a relief to be back in the city."

The streets of Dalaran were a welcome sight, and Terathus walked them happily in his human form, tall and lean and fair-haired, with sharp features and bright eyes. The purge had thinned the ranks of the city considerably, but the shops still bustled with activity. Jaina Proudmoore and her Kirin Tor had consolidated their power following the fall of the Sunreavers, and portals to the world capitals were strictly controlled by the mages. The old Horde quarter-the sword's second edge in the war on Arthas Menethil-was abandoned, but life remained in Dalaran, and Terathus loved all of it. Whoever called the green dragon to the city received a swift answer, even a discredited old wizard like Archmage Alvareaux, who believed in Karazhan twinned across mirrored worlds, among other things.

Terathus found the archmage on the outer balcony of the Purple Parlor. Another stood with him, a gnome, hair jet-black, staring off into the Dalaran night. He wore a robe of red netherweave marked in runes, a chained skull dangling from a pauldron. The garb of a warlock, and the green dragon wondered what such a being was doing within the walls of the Citadel.

"Ah, Terathus," Alvareaux started, "This is my most learned friend, Tobis Tanziver, advisor to the High Tinker, veteran of the siege of Icecrown..."

"...and warlock. Tell me Alvareaux, in which of our enfolded worlds does the green dragonflight cherish the company of demon-whisperers?"

"In this one, dragonkin, a world of demons and the soon-to-be-dead," the gnome smiled, the glint of fake teeth to his grin, "Hear us out before you head back to your wastes, but the Lady Proudmoore assured us the topic of today's meeting would interest you."

There was mischief in the little one's voice, a joy that had survived much. Terathus stared at the gnome a moment, thought of the battles the warlock had seen, of the ceremonies of death and demons of the Twisting Nether, and the mischief set him at ease. If the darkness does not bind it, call it friend...

"Then we should speak, I suppose, if the Grand Magus wills it."

The three left the balcony and settled around a table in the parlor. Archmage Alvareaux waved to the barman, and the remaining patrons were politely shooed from the room. Alvareaux placed a brass tube of unquestionable antiquity on the table, and the gnome began to speak.

"What the archmage says is true, dragon, I serve as advisor to High Tinker Mekkatorque. Specifically, I advise him on matters of espionage, with a focus on the movements of the Forsaken in and around the newly liberated regions of old Lordaeron."

Terathus thought of the Plaguelands, an infection on the face of the world breathing rot, and shivered.

"Recently, word of renewed activity by cultists in and around the Scholomance was brought to my attention. This came as a great surprise, as both the Cult of the Damned and the Twilight's Hammer was largely stamped out in the region. It concerned me enough that I chose to investigate myself."

Alvareaux shifted nervously in his seat. The old man was clearly excited by the topic.

"One evening a patrol reported a lone figure wandering the fields west of The Menders' Stead. There was a whispering or some such thing, it was difficult to gather, as they were dwarves and already quite drunk, so I went to see for myself. And what do I find in this blighted field but a single man of considerable age, digging violently at a gravesite and whispering? I approached him, naturally, and asked what he felt he was doing, and when he turned to me I saw that his face was nothing but a hollowed-out shelf, in which perched a black raven."

"Classic necromancy!" Alvareaux blurted out, slapping Terathus on the shoulder, "Your favorite!"

The gnome grinned broadly at the archmage, and continued, "I summoned a familiar in a flash, downed the hollow thing fast as you can scream 'There is nothing in this skin but ashes and bone,' and called a force of troops from Chillwind to dig in that exact spot." The gnome raised a finger to the air, as though finally attaining a point, "At two meters we found a coffin containing the body of a villager who died before the fall of Andorhol. At four meters we found the remains of an altar of some sort, although the carvings were lost on me, and at seven meters-and believe me, the dwarves were grumbling something terrible by this point-we found this."

Alvareaux passed Terathus the brass tube. He rolled it in his hands, noting the stoppers on either end.

"Go ahead, open it!" Alvareaux said excitedly.

Inside was a parchment of great age, made from the skin of some beast. The images scrawled on it appeared to form a map of the region that would be Lordaeron, perhaps predating the foundation of Arathor. The age of the thing didn't trouble the dragon, but one detail leapt from the page: set on an island in the center of what must have been Darrowmere Lake was a structure roughly identical to the Scholomance. An impossibility in a document of this age, the dragon thought.

"Entirely impossible!" Alvareaux blurted.

"Setting aside the fact that this is a map drawn of a structure built several hundred years after it was buried, look at the markings near Gahrron's farm."

Several marks crudely made but easily identifiable as graves were drawn on the map. One showed what looked like a head poking up from the earth.

"We went to this location, and found three graves, all freshly excavated. In two we found the bodies of peasants. In the third, we found a corpse dressed in the robes of old Dalaran..."

"And it was missing its head!" Alvareaux said, nearly spilling his drink. "Oh, it's my turn!"

The archmage waved his hand, and across the table several large volumes emerged from a purple mist. He opened one, and pushed the tome toward Terathus, "Once there was a crooked man named Archmage Andro Neervegard, and he lived a crooked life with all of his crooked friends, and then one day they chopped off his crooked head..."

Terathus took the tome, irritated by the archmage's playfulness, and began to read. The volume documented the trial, confession, and execution of a former archmage of Dalaran, who had fallen to the temptations of necromancy sometime before the opening of the Dark Portal.

BEFORE FERALT THESSLOCKE, Esq., BAILIFF AND HIGH COUNCILOR, AND THE JURATS OF THE HIGH MAGUS MEREDIAN

_Being the confession of Andro Neervegard, Archmage of Dalaran, advisor and council to the High Magus, being of long time past by common rumor and report addicted to the damnable act of congress with the Old Gods of the World, and of the demons who swell the borders of the Great Dark Beyond, who sought greater power in the reaches of Death, and in the Kingdoms of the Came-Before, and the same being thereupon seized by the Servitors of the High Magus, and after having been several times heard, examined, and confronted by the High Council, upon a great number of depositions made before the court by said Agents; from which it is clear and evident that for many years past the accused has practiced his diabolical perversions, by having summoned the ear of the Buried Whisperer below the Glades, and sought favor of his god, the Old Ruiner who resides in Dream; by having retained in languor through the application of foul disease certain individuals of the town of Brill, to act as conduits to the Beyond; and also cruelly hurt a number of men, women, and children, and caused the death of many animals, as recorded in the informations herein presented, it follows that he is clearly convicted and proved to be Necromancer. In expiation of which crime it has been ordered by the High Council that the accused shall be presently conducted, with Bounds of Physical and Magical dimension, to the usual place of punishment, and shall there be fastened by the Executioner to a gallows, and be hanged, strangled, killed, and their person divided into the cardinal four sections, and each section conveyed to the furthermost points of the realm, to be buried, save the head, which shall be conveyed by Agents loyal to the High Magus, to a secret place for burial, and wards cast on all such resting places; and all their goods, chattels, and estates, if any such exist, shall be forfeited to the High Magus and his Council._

CONFESSIONS OF ANDRO NEERVEGARD, NECROMANCER

_First, the said Archmage Neervegard, second heir to the barony of Alterac, immediately after said sentence was pronounced, and before leaving the Council, freely admitted that he was a Necromancer, and went on to specify both the content and intent of his heinous deeds, committed in service to one the accused named Kithis Na Nicht, and Pale Lord Kithis, referring to same as The Dead who Seeks Death, and The Whisper in the Mouth of the Void, and confessed that he was quite young when the whispers were first heard, and from the instructions therein detailed, that the condemned had achieved feats of great power in Magic, including the revenance of the long dead, from which the condemned sought council; and influence over the minds of certain magistrates and agents of Dalaran itself._

_ Moreover, the condemned freely admitted that the ultimate purpose of these deeds was to ascertain the location of certain artifacts of great value to his master, which would lead to the location of his remains, upon which the condemned would perform rites and recombine certain elements in order to welcome his master among the living, for the purpose of communing with the Old Ruiner, who walks the path to the Void..._

From here the text was destroyed in thick black ink, apparently in an effort to render the remainder of the confession illegible. Several of the names were unknown to Terathus, which confused the green dragon, as he was long familiar with the history of the mages of Dalaran. The 'Old Ruiner' was surely the rumored N'Zoth, who whispered madness to the earliest Quel'dorei on their landing at Tirisfal, and by some accounts resided in the Rift of Aln, deep in the Emerald Dream. Both the names of the condemned and his supposed master were a mystery to the dragon, and he turned to Alvareaux with a confused look.

"Never before in my life have I enjoyed the company of a confounded dragon!" the archmage bubbled, shoving three of the slimmer volumes in front of Terathus, "Each of these several volumes should contain references to any mage living in Dalaran at the time of High Magus Meredian, and yet there is no mention of Andro Neervegard. I found a few references in the records of the baronry of Alterac," an old and heavily embellished volume appeared in the archmage's hand, "but even those had been heavily redacted," and the book vanished again in a flash of light.

"It seems the wizards of Dalaran wished to condemn this man to nonexistence, rather than simple death," chirped Tobis. "One must salivate at the dangers involved."

Terathus leaned back in his chair, and stared out through the balcony to the spires of Dalaran. What had walked here that would cause such an unprecedented response? Not even Kel'thuzad's name had been stricken from the history of the Mage Kingdom, and the lich had slaughtered the whole of Lordaeron in service to death itself. But he was asking the wrong question, mere distractions...

"Whose body was in the grave you found, the mage whose head was taken?" the dragon asked.

The gnome pushed the confession back to Terathus, "Archmage Feralt Thesslocke, a noble of Stromgarde, buried in the dust of peasants in the Western Plaguelands. Confessor to Archmage Andro Neervegard, who no longer exists, and subject of a map buried at an impossible depth. And they, whoever 'they' are, found him anyway."

"What would a high councilor, court officer, and scribe of Dalaran know of the accused, my friend?" Alvareaux was practically giggling now.

"The location of the remains of Andro Neervegard."

"My new friend!" Tobis Tanziver exclaimed, "Come with me to the silver hills of Tirisfal!"


End file.
